The Internet has expanded at an incredible pace since originating as a means for scientists to exchange data. Faster access speeds increased the number of Internet subscribers; more subscribers drove businesses to increase their presence on the Internet; more business presence increased subscribers demands to actually do something useful on the Internet; and the demand to provide useful applications not only drove the further increased access speeds, but also the further increase both of the number of subscribers and of the business presence in the global electronic market (e-market). The new step in the e-revolution is applying the established Internet model across the mobile environment.
The Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) specification was developed as an industry initiative for a universal business registry or catalog of web- and e-services. UDDI is designed to enable software to automatically discover and integrate with services on the web. Using a UDDI browser, users can also review the information contained in the registry, which is a network of servers on the Internet similar to the Domain Name System (DNS). UDDI may be analogized to a large electronic phonebook; it typically contains “white pages” (i.e., addresses and contacts), “yellow pages” (i.e., industry classification through taxonomies), and “green pages” (i.e., descriptions of services). The “green pages” will typically include the extensible markup language (XML) version, type of encryption, and a document type definition (DTD) of the standard. UDDI messages will typically ride on top of the simple object access protocol (SOAP), which invokes services on the web.
Web-and e-services may register with a UDDI operator. Once registered, others can discover and use the registered services by accessing one or more of the UDDI registries. UDDI allows for complete control over describing, categorizing, and registering the web-or e-service via taxonomies and other extensible information. A taxonomy, in general, is a classification system of any set of organisms. In the Internet context, a taxonomy is generally known as a classification scheme or categorization of websites, and/or web-or e-services into a hierarchy for searching purposes.
UDDI supports taxonomies as a means for reifying and organizing the mass of information and data deposited in to the registry. UDDI allows users to define multiple taxonomies that may be used within UDDI. In such a manner, multiple taxonomies may be overlaid on a single UDDI entity. The taxonomy is a metadata description of the web-or e-service that facilitates the organization of the information as a hierarchical tree structure. This allows for a metadata-based search, which produces more relevant matches than a typical string search. A taxonomy is used to define a coherent description of services. The specific taxonomy used to register the service is the same used to discover the service. For this reason, the taxonomy should be descriptive and robust enough to represent services within a particular class of service.
Currently, UDDI supports several different standard taxonomies for business and commodity classification. Universal Standard Products and Services Classification (UNSPSC) is a taxonomy that classifies and identifies commodities. The work includes identifiers, hierarchical classifications, titles, definitions, and version control information. See http://eccma.org/unspsc/. Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) was originally developed in the 1930's to classify establishments by the type of activity in which they were primarily engaged. The SIC system uses a 4-digit code to identify its classifications. However, as the economic world changed SIC came under criticism, which lead to the development of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). See http://www.naics.com/info.htm/. NAICS is a 6-digit code identifier which focuses on a production-oriented, or supply-based conceptual framework. Its intent is to give special attention to developing production-oriented classification. ISO 3166 is a Geographic Code System, which provides a domain of values used to provide geographic categorization of businesses and services within the UDDI registry. See http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/.
UDDI also currently supports other business-oriented identification systems such as Dun & Bradstreet's D-U-N-S number identification system. The D-U-N-S number identification system is a unique 9-digit identification sequence that provides unique identifiers of single business entities, while linking corporate family structures together. See http://www.dnb.com/. Thomas Register is also a business-oriented identification system that identifies and classifies many U.S. and Canadian companies and products. See http://www.thomasregister.com/.
Web services (infrastructure services or applications that provide some component or functionality to an overall solution delivered via the Internet) and e-services (the actual overall solution delivered via the Internet that may use several web services) are proliferating across the Internet driving e-commerce and business-to-business (B2B)-commerce. However, with the increase in mobile access devices, new and existing web- and e-services are desired to be delivered over the mobile access networks. Moreover, as the number of such mobile e-services (MES) grows, it becomes important to provide a means of discovering the appropriate service at any given time and for any given location. The increased complexities of real time personalization, not typically found in other traditional Internet e-services, along with the complexities due to the mobile aspect of MES, extends beyond the existing standard taxonomy schemes incorporated into and supported by UDDI.
Much of the Internet discovery and description of services is performed with point-to-point integration. However, point-to-point integration will become less of a viable option when addressing the potential volume and dynamic nature of web-and e-services. MES networks, often referred to as MES ecosystems, may have many services, some appearing and others disappearing at any given time. Managing tightly coupled and point-to-point interfaces for web-and e-services is already costly and prone to breakdowns in in situ Internet applications. The complications only increase with the addition of the mobile aspect to MES delivery.